By the summer months each year, most network TV shows have already had their fates decided when it comes to renewal or cancellation. There have been some holdouts in the 2025 TV schedulenotably including NBC’s Grosse Pointe Garden Society and ABC’s turbulent Doctor Odyssey. Sadly, fans can now cross Gpgs off that list of waiting shows, as NBC has cancelled the drama/dark comedy after just one season like Suits THE.
The news is particularly difficult after what the showrunners told me about a possible move to Peacock, and their pre-cancellation pitch for why people should tune in with a Peacock subscription.
Grosse Pointe Garden Society’s Cancellation
Grosse Pointe Garden Society survived the NBC cancellation bloodbath back in the spring that saw that cuts of shows like Found, The Irrationaland Night Courtthe latter of which is ending despite Melissa Rauch’s attempts to find a new home for it. Gpgs not getting the axe at the time didn’t mean good news was on the way. Deadline reports that NBC cancelled Grosse Pointe Garden Society after one season, and the delay was due to NBCUniversal considering moving the drama from network TV to streaming before deciding against it.
The reason for the ultimate cancellation is reportedly due to numbers that indicated Gpgs would struggle to grow its audience on the streamer, despite the switch from Sundays to Fridays boosting viewership on Peacock. It also cost less than a Peacock original drama, but all the factors in favor of a future evidently didn’t outweigh the necessary numbers, and it feels like Grosse Pointe Garden Society really was sent “to die” on NBC Friday nights.
I think this news hits harder for me in light of how co-showrunner Bill Krebs had optimistically explained back in the spring why the switch to Fridays was great for a potential move to Peacock to the Law & Order: Organized Crimesaying that “There is a world where a show like this would live much better on Peacock than it would on NBC,” and they’d “had discussions like that.” Alas, that interview happened in April, and those conversations didn’t pay off in good news by late June.
How The Showrunners Pitched GPGS For Peacock Subscribers
During that April interview, co-showrunner Jenna Bans also shared that “we do” see a future for Grosse Pointe Garden Society beyond the Season 1 finale, despite those final episodes resolving the biggest mysteries to that point. With some episodes still left to air at the time and the show reportedly gaining steam on Peacock, I’d asked the showrunners how they would pitch it to somebody who hadn’t check it out yet. They said:
- Jenna Bans: “I would say it’s almost like a throwback, 2010 shows we loved back in the day.”
- Bill Krebs: “We like to think of it as a guilty pleasure, like How to Get Away with Murder.”
- Jenna Bans: “Or Desperate Housewives or Big Little Lies. One of those shows you can just like, really get into. It has a lot of twists and turns.”
- Bill Krebs: “A soap with a big world that has a really juicy mystery behind it.”
- Jenna Bans: ” People behaving badly… It’s throwback television that we miss.”
Bill Krebs went on to say that their show “is a thinker” with their “future timelines” and “things that you have to follow and keep track of, which we enjoy and hope the fans like to track.” According to him, they were “very conscious of from the beginning” that all the clues needed to “add up and feel rewarding.” As somebody who considers it my favorite new network TV show of the spring 2025 season, I would say that they succeeded! There are also “a bunch of Easter eggs sprinkled throughout” that viewers can catch on a second watch because the EPs “didn’t want it to be cheap.” So much potential, now lost!
This is actually the second time that Bill Krebs and Jenna Bans had a dark comedy/drama axed by NBC, after Good Girls was cancelled back in 2021. I’m going to miss Grosse Pointe Garden Society when the usual TV season starts back up again without the show starring Melissa Fumero, Aja Naomi King, Ben Rappaport, and AnnaSophia Robb. Just imagine – we could have even seen characters swearing on Peacock, like what Law & Order: Organized Crime took advantage of when it switched from NBC! For now, you can at least check out the first season streaming on Peacock now. .
